A Fight Between Ambition and Mental Health

              

             Having a mental illness means that, while it doesn't happen all the time, sometimes your brain will be at war with itself - subconscious manifesting itself without your conscious mind being able to identify why - and your body and emotions and well being  will just be casualties of this, forcing you to put everything on the back burner and focus only on the way in which your mind is fighting battle after battle, to make you, as in the whole of you, win the war. So, in case you haven't figured it out, it leaves little room in your life for everything else and that is something I'm struggling to come to terms with right now.

                I've spoken about how I've relapsed and how recovery hasn't been an easy road this time. Having to constantly try and make an effort towards being okay is exhausting and as I've been returning to Uni, slowly and taking it day by day, I am realising how much my mental health can be an obstacle for the plans I had in mind, the things I want to accomplish. This is the last semester  of my degree and, if it all had gone according to plan, I would breeze through this semester and graduate in May. Now, I'm terrified I won't. Now, I'm terrified of most things if we're being totally honest. I started getting comfortable with my writing and decided to start submitting my work to all these different publications and even got my firstpiece published. I became an ambassador for the #girlgazeproject. My ideas about the future are changing rapidly in a way that is scary, of course, but also exciting. I want to devote myself to all of these projects, to my writing, to my classes, to being able to enjoy my last semester with my friends but depression and anxiety seem to have different plans for me. It felt, and sometimes still feels, like they are trying to bring me down by slowing me down, but maybe that's what I need right now. Maybe, I need to slow down in order to pick up the pace again and move on to be the person I am starting to see that I can be.

                Dealing with a mental illness, in my personal experience, has had to come with a lot of acceptance and, perhaps, this is another thing I need to accept: not to get ahead of myself when my body and my mind aren't ready or strong enough. Accept that I can still do and accomplish, it just might take a little more time and I might need to take more breaks in between. Accept that, because I am not there yet, I will get overwhelmed easily but I can't let that stop me. I just need to take a deep breath and, step by tiny step, work through all these hurdles. Accept that I am capable, even if my illness tries to tell me that I am not. Most importantly, change my own narrative. Change the fact that my ambitions and my mental health have to be at war and works towards helping them find peace within one another, let them encourage each other to heal and propel me forward, not making me step back.