Goodbye Hollins Hall

It’s been nearly three months since I wrote my last blog post and I wanted to explain why.

The past 14 months have been a rocky road. In one respect I have grown as a person, I have learnt how to accept being plus size and have found a new confidence to wear clothes that I love and push the boundary of what plus size fashion can be and I am extremely proud of the growth I have achieved with that.

On the other hand things such as home life and friendships have caused me to spiral in to a quite dark depression. I have been open about having depressive tendencies and suffering from being very down from time to time and the things I would normally do to bring myself out of those, unfortunately over time I have sunk in to a very dark place and I want to share my experience so people can understand me and with the hope it may help others going through similar issues.

Since I moved to Leeds I have had many issues with my home life. Without being too detailed there have been many arguments and problems that have been brought on from living with someone with alcoholism. I have been constantly made to feel life a shitty person that is just in the way and life within my house would be better without me here.

With that being said I have struggled to integrate myself fully in to a friendship group and although I am so very grateful to the beautiful people I work with and the small amount of friends I have made, lacking a support system can lead to being very isolated and therefor contributing to my depression further.

Over time, with each argument, with each horrible comment and with each day and weekend spent alone in my room I grew more and more detached from the world. The thoughts of “would people care if I wasn’t here?” and “Would it be easier if I just disappeared?” started to come in to my brain. I would suffer from anxiety attacks when receiving texts from friends and family members. The journey to work would be me trying to steady my breathing because the thought of messing up at work or causing a problem was the scariest thing to me. I didn’t want to be shouted at anymore. I didn’t want to be a failure anymore. I just wanted to disappear.

I became sluggish, I never have any energy, and I struggle to get out of bed because the thought of going to work and communicating with people is just not enjoyable to me. I’ve gone from being someone who loves to be around people and go out and live my life to someone who likes to sit in bed, in my room, on my own and watch TV, play video games and speak to nobody.

I went on holiday a few weeks ago which I was very excited for. I thought I would get away from everything that I was feeling, enjoy nature and just have some time to relax and hopefully come back a happier person. Unfortunately things took a massive turn and with that I had to make a decision to take myself away from this situation before things get worse and my mental health deteriorates further or continue down the path I was going and perhaps end up a complete shell of a person or worse. I would be lying if I said I was happy about this decision. I am so sad that I have to leave my job, my friends, my home and my mum but I know it is what is best for me and my health.

Although talking about depression and anxiety can seem like an attention seeking move it couldn’t be further from that. I believe there is strength in talking about mental health, nearly a 5th of adults in the UK suffer from depression and anxiety and I am one of those people and it shouldn’t be something we are ashamed of.

We shouldn’t be scared to share our stories because we are worried people will judge us for being attention seekers or too open with our feelings. We should all talk about these things because our stories could help someone else. The thing with depression is that you can feel very lonely and like nobody else understands what you are feeling, you feel stupid because there are people starving to death and living in war zones and you are upset because of something quite small in comparison. No matter how big or small your problem I implore you to share it and get advice and don’t let it grow and fester.

I called this sight the Happiness Hut because I wanted it to bring happiness to those that read it but whilst going through all this shit I have realised what would make me happy is to share this story and hopefully help someone else who feels down, or depressed or suffers from anxiety so they know it’s okay, I get it, I know how it feels and anyone who needs to talk to someone my inbox is always open.

There is so much help out there for people who suffer with mental health problems and I will link the NHS page with all the mental health helplines down below. I just want to thank my beautiful family and my close friends who have been there for me during this really dark journey. Hopefully much better and happier things are to come!

NHS mental health helplines

https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/stress-anxiety-depression/mental-health-helplines/