My story 

So my story and what lead me to have a mental breakdown... turns out I was slowly unravelling for quite some time without even knowing!

I turned 28 and felt enormous internal pressure to move out of my parents’ house; the house I had grown up in and lived in my entire life. My safe haven. My friends were all doing it and other people my age were doing it so I felt that at 28 years of age, I shouldn’t still be living at home, I should fly the nest! An assumption that I now realise is completely wrong. I can now see that you do not need to conform to idealistic social ‘norms’ and it genuinely doesn’t matter where you live as long as you’re happy and you have a roof over your head. However hindsight is a brilliant thing and I ended up buying a flat in Holes Bay, Poole which resulted in me being extremely miserable.

In my flat I felt completely isolated. I’d gone from living in a detached house where I felt safe and didn’t have to worry about noise, (or anything for that matter) to now worrying that the tv was too loud or I was annoying the neighbours - the neighbours I never actually saw and if I did, were completely standoffish and unfriendly. I’d gone from living in a close-knit neighbourhood where my neighbours would say good morning to me and speak to me when I left the house, neighbours I’d known for years and could ask for help with literally anything; some of which I’d known my whole life, to these new neighbours that kept themselves to themselves and seemed annoyed if I said hello to them. I’d also never lived alone before so this was a massive change that I wasn’t at all ready for and I felt cut off and unsafe.

Before moving into my flat, I had spent the year of 2019 trying to cram as much into it as I possibly could and doing something ‘big’ or ‘exciting’ every month. This was to make up for the four previous years being awful with unexpected family bereavements and my dad being incredibly ill. Rather than dealing with my feelings, I masked them and plodded on with life by booking a ski weekend, a trip to Beijing to trek the Great Wall of China and a weekend in Edinburgh to see my childhood favourite girlband the Spice Girls, amongst many other things. Unfortunately, this combined with buying my flat and the comedown from China resulted in a monumental self-implode and me being diagnosed with depression and anxiety.

I never thought I’d suffer with mental health issues so it came as a massive shock to me when I did and I felt so unbelievably fragile. People close to me definitely noticed this. I moved back home and was literally glued to my mum’s hip! If my parents fell asleep downstairs during the day, I’d watch to see that their chest was moving and I was afraid to be alone. I started my therapy sessions and I discovered that I’d been holding onto experiences from when I was sixteen that at the time I just brushed to the back of my mind and ‘plodded on’ through life with. 

When I was sixteen, the boyfriend I lost my virginity to cheated on me and the feelings that I felt towards his betrayal were left completely unresolved. I was young and just dipping my toe into adulthood when everything came crashing down around me. I jumped into a relationship with somebody else straight off the back of this and never looked back. This new relationship distracted me from the pain and anguish of the previous relationship and I found myself settling into a mundane routine for the next five years with somebody that had stronger feelings for me than I had for him. I can now recognise that this new relationship was one big rebound for me and was never right from the start but I got used to the familiarity of it all and the routine that came with it.

This relationship came to a natural end, albeit quite explosive a few months later when we had a massive argument, and commitment soon became an issue for me. I ended up having a brief ‘relationship’ with an ex before signing up to internet dating where I’d go on to enjoy dates with different people without getting too committed. Nothing ever got serious as I put a stop to it before I got hurt. I was always the one to end things as some kind of defence mechanism and if I could sense something was off, I wouldn’t address it as that was enough for me to end the relationship. One week I went on three dates with three different guys to the same venue and I must have looked like a massive player despite not sleeping around.

This went on for a couple of years until I met Mr not so Right. I worked with him and for whatever reason, I quickly found myself infatuated with him. He wasn’t my usual type and was shorter than the guys I usually went for but there was something pulling me into him. Before long we ended up dating and this relationship lasted six months. Unfortunately he became very distant towards the end and after tackling this, there weren’t any improvements so I ended it. Having to work with an ex is not at all easy and it became a massive challenge.

We ended up in a weird friends with benefits type situation for the next three and a half years and he played constant mind games with me the whole time. One minute we were just friends and the next we were more. I was completely confused and he had me hanging on like a puppet on his strings. I wouldn’t have put up with this from anybody else so I didn’t know why I was with him. He kept reeling me in before saying hurtful things to me and the process would then repeat. Eventually I had enough and removed him from my life, blocking him on all social media channels so that he couldn’t worm his way back. 

That’s when I started undergoing private therapy. Since starting my therapy sessions, I have been faced with many more challenges but I am actually much better equipped in dealing with them now. These challenges have predominantly been physical health concerns and working in a hospital throughout the Covid-19 pandemic. Just after my breakdown, these challenges would have been enough to tip me over the edge but nowadays I can think more rationally about situations. I’ve entered 2021 with a completely different perspective on life and a better understanding of myself and who I want to be. I’m finally looking forward to the future and the adventures that lay ahead and I realise that I have had extremely high expectations of people that I’ve now lowered.