9 months on...

The last post was in March. My time with writing felt uninspiring, as much as I love my blog. Life was stagnant. Still. Maybe calming, although I felt unmotivated. My mental health didn’t feel great, but yet I was managing. Actually, that’s quite negative of me. I was doing well, really well in fact. So that’s why I thought I didn’t feel right to have a blog about mental struggles/ challenges when I wasn’t having them.

So why now?

A lot happened in those 9 months. I fell in love, I had a crazy social life, I was slowly building a business, I was taking on my biggest fitness challenge, I was living with great people in a city I adored. Meeting the best people with a new story every weekend about silly funny times.

Now; that’s all vanished and I’m on the other side of the world. I guess reading that long list of great things I had, I still know I wasn’t always happy, and things weren’t always that great and actually the mental battles were there even though on paper, I shouldn’t of been mentally struggling. That’s the annoying battle with the scope of mental wellbeing. The physical stuff in life could be perfect, and yet our brain still chooses to break and shut down. It’s very true, we could have everything we ever wanted in what we deem to be a ‘happy’ life, but the brain that continues to follow us, that is what truly decides how we react to life itself.

I’m not even sure how to explain the changes of those aspects I had before I decided to travel. It all gradually became sad. The friends I had no longer felt a connection with me, the person I loved was going through their own journey that I couldn’t support them with, the house I lived in felt unsafe for me to be me in, the city became colder and nights out were less and less, my job starting to grate on me. It all came in over my head. I felt the hole. Travel, I knew would help me escape - quite literally. Even though, I was scared, still scared about returning back to the UK. Because I know I’ll have to build another version of me.

I am a clean slate whilst being away. It really is helping me depict who I am when I don’t have to be anyone. I don’t have to be a ‘work’ version of me. I don’t have to be a ‘friend’ that people for years know me as. I don’t have to be a ‘love interest’ to anyone. I am title-less. It really is showing who I am when I don’t have to be anyone for anyone. I can’t tell you the surprises I find myself in. What I really like about feeling rejuvenated within my mindset as I’ve left the UK is that, no matter where I am/ who I am with, or even when I am alone. There is a layer of me that does not change.

I forget there is an audience. Reading this, if you have gotten this far along. Because writing this when I am deep within a country that barely speaks my language, faces of people I will never know by memory, actions of mine that wont be remembered, I feel free in my everyday. Truly, the temperamental element of my everyday means I don’t need to hid or put on my ‘best self’. There feels like no pressure, no one to please, no one to really ‘show up’ for other than myself - that’s even if I feel like it.

I still struggle when I’m away. Ive still had the bed days, the crying days. the days when I binge eat and cry some more and eat and cry and sleep all day. Yes. Travel hasnt made me stop having problems. I have less, yes, but I still follow me when I came out here. And the ‘me’ that came in my backpack, still carries a lot of weight I had when I left home. But that’s okay. Change is slow. Change is uncomfortable. Change is happening every single day, so as you can imagine, no wonder my head is sometimes feeling overwhelmed - just as I did back in the UK.

I’m not sure the point of this post. I guess it felt good to write again. I forgot, this voice I had inside my mind when I write. Speaking without sound, listening to my feelings, seeing if there is logic within it, or it is merely the irrational me just wanting attention and unnecessary drama (which is also valid in that feeling too).

I wanted to say hi to this version of me.

I think I want to write more, but as usual, to write for me, but if someone likes it too.. always a good reason as well.