Summer 2015

I would like to start by apologising for not posting in so long.
I've been through quite a terrible depression relapse that I denied the existence of for a couple of months, and I have only just begun to claw my way out of it. I know that I'm not quite myself yet, but I'm beginning to feel glimmers of my 'happy' self coming through most days.
I can't believe that the last time I posted was at the beginning of July. So much has happened since then, which is exactly why I've been so vacant on here.
I spent my summer living at my sister's student house, which was filled with both joy and sadness. It was so exciting to move away from home and do things extremely independently, I was also boasting about how this would prepare me for University life, and in a way it did. However, by the end I started to feel low again without much internal explanation.
I knew that my mum didn't want me to leave her for the summer, but she let me anyway, and my dad was quite vacant in my life by this time, so my summer adventure started with a lift from my childhood best- friend, who drove the two hours to Leamington without hesitation. I was so ready to do this. The first month was very exciting, I handed out CVs on my first day there, and got a job straight away in a gorgeous cafe with lovely people. Steph (my sister) was working at wetherspoons and so worked odd shifts, which often left me alone for long periods of time, but I don't remember these being particularly bad. I always knew that she'd come home later and we'd enjoy ourselves together.
I then had to get another job because of my financial situation, which felt especially important with uni coming up. So I got an awful second job at a Morrison's cafe, which took away the magic of my summer. I started at 6.30 am, so had to wake up at 5.15 in a cold student house four days a week. The job itself was also completely unenjoyable. All the staff seemed to also hate their jobs there and my motivation was struggling. I wanted to call in sick everyday because the job made me sick of everything. This job lasted until September when I moved home, purely because of the financial gain.
I honestly don't know if it was good for me to live with Steph over the summer. I switched from thinking it was the best decision ever to wondering what it would have been like at home. It was what I wanted at the time, but I'm not sure if it was what I needed. I don't regret it, but I don't know whether it was the right choice.
I think what I was really doing was distracting myself. I could pretend again. I could pretend that my parents were still at home together and that things were still 'ok', which is always my initial reaction to bad things happening in my life. This is why I'm not sure whether moving out was the right thing to do for my emotional wellbeing. It was at the time, because I loved staying with Steph, but it then pushed back my inevitable breakdown to the first term of Uni, which is the least ideal time to plunge into a deep bout of depression.
What I really truly wanted out of my summer was for it to be like old summers, I wanted that continuity with everything else changing; but because everything else changed, there was no way that was going to stay the same. And I knew this, and I still know this now, but I still yearn for the impossible- which has both beneficial and destructive sides to it (which I'll explain in a different post, because it's quite a complicated topic for me). All I wanted was to stay at home with Steph, 'wasting' the day with junk food, awful tv and cuddling Teddy (my pet bunny). But I soon realised that this was never going to happen again, and 'never going to happen again's were what brought on this depression relapse.
I was just trying to cling on to the last pieces of my childhood, but I can't ever get them back now. And realising this has brought back a lot of the same feelings that I had after previous events, like my cancer diagnosis.
My whole world changed again. And it's taken me a long time to deal with it, but I'm really trying and really hoping that with my knowledge I have gained from therapy I can deal with it better this time. Even if my depression relapse tries to convince me otherwise.

Sophie xo

What's Happened

In order to understand how much my life has changed in the past six months, I'm going to compose a list of what's happened.
So, as you already know, I went through my first break-up and my Dad had a nervous breakdown. This happened in October and December 2014.
At this time, I was studying an Art Foundation Course in Reading. This involved two hours of walking a day which really dragged my leg back to a very painful place. Even more frustratingly, I passed my driving test but couldn't afford a car, and was not able to use anyone else's. So I had no option but to walk, as no one offered me a solution and I couldn't afford taxis/buses myself earing about £40 a week. So my chronic pain increased dramatically.
Then my Dad spent a month in a psychiatric ward. This was a hard time, especially around Christmas.
He came out quite different, but in a good way, and things improved slightly.
Then my Mum and Dad broke up. It was a very one-sided thing, and made everything a lot more difficult, awkward and hurtful.
This meant that they put our house up for sale, and we should be moving in a few month's time.
Following this, my Grandad passed away. And it was cancer that took him.

This is a lot to happen in less than a year, but what worries me is that I haven't seemed to have reacted yet. I think that I now expect these things to happen, so it doesn't surprise me anymore. This sounds awfully sad, but I feel that I now appreciate it a lot more when something good actually happens; so I am thankful for the improved perspective it has given me.

I will make more detailed posts in the very near future, see you then

 

Sophie xo

2015

The past year has been one of the most difficult in my life. I've not kept up with my blog because I just couldn't find the emotional energy, but I'm not going to avoid the problem anymore; I'm going to work through it post by post.
The beginning of this year saw me revisit my psychologist after about a year of not needing a session. And that was hard for me to deal with. I felt like all of my tireless work to become stable again had just fallen off the face of the earth. I felt ashamed of myself to go back, which I know now is not a healthy thought, and no one should feel this way about revisiting therapy. I have been really struggling, and getting help again was the best thing I could've done.
So, what really made me get help again were two huge life events for me emotionally. Firstly, my boyfriend at the time broke up with me (which I can now laugh about, what a waste), and secondly, my Dad had a nervous breakdown.
Now, these two things came at quite a close time, and I found myself in somewhat of a downward spiral. This was last winter, and so my sister and most of my friends had moved away to University, leaving me feeling quite alone. I know that I'm exceptionally good at hiding sadness- and I had let my walls fall down for this boyfriend, so I definitely could not allow myself to share my feelings due to the trust issues he left behind. So, I emailed my psychologist and booked myself in.
I visited her a few days ago, but I have recently moved to my sister's house and so our sessions will now be over the telephone. This scares me a little, although we did discuss that my mood would improve staying here rather than at home, so it should be enough contact.
I have stabilised enough now to be able to write about these things on here, so I have definitely improved emotionally. I feel that the past seven months have equipped me with more experience and knowledge of how to deal with exceptionally hard circumstances once more, although it did knock me back in my journey of recovery.
I discovered that your first relapse is terrifying. I took me so long to struggle back to stability, and crashed back in to depression so quickly. Everything sort of came rushing back- the guilt, the self questioning, the confusion... it was all so familiar that I just automatically switched back into those habits. And to make it worse, I felt like I had just deluded myself into thinking I was happy for that year. And looking at it now, I had. I'm in such a happier and healthier place now, and very thankful for that toxic relationship to be over.
I just need time. And now that college is over, I have time to deal with what's happened to my family, especially now that I'm finally completely over my first relationship.
I want to break up what I had considered one post into a timeline of posts, explaining the different emotions I've been feeling, and their link to the habits I learnt whilst coping with my cancer survival. It will be a hard journey, talking about my dad and my parents splitting up, but it's important for you and I to understand the wider impacts of a person having cancer on those around them- making sure not to give in to the guilty feelings surrounding it.

Sophie Hartley xo 

Survivor Speech at the Life Styled By Us fashion show

Last night I was given the privilege of representing the BCRT at a fashion show, hosted by Life Styled By Us at the Bel and The Dragon in Cookham. And I must say that it’s really made me very proud of myself to see how far I've come. I’ve grown from a person who couldn’t even say the word cancer without it being stifled and forced, to someone who can comfortably stand up and speak about their experience. I know that I write a lot about it on here, and I'm used to people asking about my leg/limp, but this was quite different. I was asked to present my story to a room full of guests, in order to really connect the charity they were donating to with the event itself. And I feel like this was such a wonderful idea, as we often just buy raffle tickets etc. for the sake of it, without realising the actual cause we are helping.

I was a little emotional when writing the speech, but I was fine when reading it aloud. I think it helped that I didn’t know anyone there (other than my Uncle, who accompanied me), and that it was only about 8 minutes long. It seemed quite difficult to assess which parts of my story were the most important, especially considering the fact that my perception of it is very different to everyone else’s. It was also a bit of a challenge to write an upbeat, engaging speech about the hardest time of my life, but thankfully my positive approach to everything seeped through into this task as well.

What I think struck me most about the night was meeting the chef, who suggested the charity because his brother is currently battling Ewing’s Sarcoma. He thanked me, and told me that he was humbled by my talk.

And that’s really made me realise that all of this makes a difference. I feel so inspired to become more involved with the BCRT and to personally focus on reaching out to people on here, and also face to face. I'm thinking of possibly starting a vlog where I would pretty much discuss the same as I do on here, so that I can reach out to people who possibly don’t have enough time to read long blog posts or would prefer to watch and listen rather than read. I feel that this would also be a good platform to match a name with a face, and a face with a story, so you could all get to know me a little bit more. (Any advice on this would be truly appreciated!)

Sophie Louisa xo

'Life isn't fair'

Reaching out to people I'm close to has always been a personal struggle. My beliefs have so often been invalidated by phrases such as this. It’s difficult for people to know what to say, especially when blame cannot be assigned to an individual. I'm fully aware that my life has not been fair. But somehow I always conclude that it’s my own fault. Growing up in a Catholic home and school environment taught me that I would be rewarded for being good, and punished for being bad. Films taught me that good people always had a happy ending, and bad people met a cruel end. And then I was punished in the cruellest way. My body was attacking me. So my thought process began to establish that I had acted in a bad way, and that I was not a good person. But that just was not true. I was a child. It’s so hard to remember that. Eight years old. And I expected myself to be able to deal with this diagnosis. The NHS expected me to be able to deal with this diagnosis. My ten year old sister was expected to deal with this. And people are wondering why there is such a mental health crisis arising. Patients have to willingly ask for psychiatric help when they are diagnosed. And when life is not fair, people keep to themselves because they ‘don’t want to bother anyone with their own problems’.

So yes, my life has not been fair. I have not been given the same opportunities as ‘normal’ people, and this is what I find so frustrating. I am the only person who can help me get better. I was the one who went through the entire physical and emotional trauma. It was me lying in that hospital bed, struggling just to stay alive. And you’re responding to my experiences with the phrase ‘life isn’t fair’? I think I'm aware of this. Bringing a generalisation of your attitude towards life does not validate my statement, whatever it may have been. Responding with ‘that must have been hard for you’ or even ‘shit, that sucks’ is more helpful than trying to compare my experience with your own, or anyone else’s. Also, apologising has quite a detrimental effect. When I explain my past to a new person, 90% of the time I receive an apology. They’re either an acquaintance, apologising for bringing it up, or a family member, apologising for the fact that it happened. This again links back to the natural human want to assign blame. And it makes the individual explaining their past feel guilty for making the other person sad/apologetic.

Overall, I feel like what I'm trying to explain is that you must carefully consider your response so as to validate people’s feelings. Avoiding stereotypical phrases like ‘life isn’t fair’ and ‘there’re people much worse off than you’ will help with this, and lessen the impact over time on the person suffering. After all, when your emotions are invalidated again and again, you stop trying to explain. You stop trying to reach out because it feels useless, and this is even more unfair. 

 

 

Sophie Hartley xo