I should be working but I have a lot going on in my head. One of those things is the chorus to this song:

Everybody’s gotta live,  and everybody’s gonna die  

Everybody’s gotta live before you know the reason why…..

It’s an upbeat song. It’s a song that makes me think about all the times I want to hide under my bed and not be noticed, it is a song plays out an inner conflict between my fears and my dreams.

It is a song that helps me keep on at my dreams by turning them into goals.

It’s scary for me to commit to anything. I am the person who when I say – Yes. That is it. There is no turning back.

GET YOUR ASS BACK IN THE LIFE GAME.

Hell might raise the roof off  my mind but I will work through the pain. I do it by doing everything  that screams:

 But I don’t wanna………

I think:

Daisy, how can you seriously think you can help people learn to manage their own lives and issues when I am a walking calamity on automatic?  

Well, that’s the thing.

These days, I may have more knowledge and skills of how to manage my problems and thoughts and feelings.

Does that mean I am suddenly cured?

Perfect?

Hell, no!

This is the thought equivalent to the sleazy pickup line, I don’t need to hear in my own mind.

I do have a system in place that helps me manage stressful times, my illness, me.

Why can’t I be accessing things I know make me well before the government says you are dying – now we will admit you to a hospital?

No, I know how to stay out of the hospital – I know how to be as healthy as I can be when it gets a bit rough.

 I reach out.

There are a bunch of people who I will be working with for the next 14 weeks and I may have some uncomfortable moments.

If I am maintaining my health with support and need to drink a nutritional shake to get the energy I need to carry out what I want to do, people need to accept that and challenge their own ideas about Mental and Physical wellbeing.

Just because I am not 100% healthy ( I don’t think I have ever been 100% healthy or will be) doesn’t mean I have to hide away from the world and be ashamed.

My illness is not me. It is a part of me and because I have a Wellness Recovery Action Plan of my own, I know how to recognize when I am well, not so well, falling off the wagon, or possibly need support to pick me up.

I have a plan. I know people get ill and people get well.

Do I think I can pull this MA off?    I’m half way there.

I had a mini meltdown last night because my tutor won’t engage with me in the forum (especially when I  felt I needed professional input) – I turned to other writers in the forum and yes, they helped a bit.

 Would my life be better if my Tutor didn’t hold a grudge against me because I am asking for my TMA1 to be reassessed?  Yes.

Would it be easier to back down and compromise my values and beliefs?    Easy for who?

I’ve signed up to do an 8-week acting program in Leeds – in the hope, it will be a refresher to the acting degree I did in 2009-11. I was a different person then- with a whole lot of different problems at that time.

 I want the chance to use this opportunity to help inform my writing for my MA and any future work I do, I also want to give myself a confidence booster for when I  get anxious about public speaking.

Yes, it may look like I am super confident on the outside. I know about how to communicate nonverbal signs that indicate I’m okay. I know what to say to myself to psyche myself up.

In public, I can do an amazing impression of someone with confidence and flair – a lot of us do.

What is wrong with people knowing that in private that sometimes I’m in tears, don’t want to leave the house, my husband hugs me till I feel safe again?

 I doubt myself, think of giving up.

Does that mean I will give up or fall apart?

My aim is, to stay as well as I can and reach my goals and achieve them.

I will do my best to make sure I damn well achieve them.

Don’t you find it strange how, one minute, the world can seem to fall in on itself and then a couple of hours later, a little fire sparks up and blazes up your entire being?

It’s that little bit of hope.

Hope means: it is possible.

It also means I/we need to work hard to achieve our goals, get scared and have that awkward conversation and feel the anxiety and stay with it.

It also means we get to experience the times when we are “in” the moment, laughing, listening to others, learning, seeing what we can do when we just do it.

No one said life is easy. I have screamed this at the world hundreds of times:

I NEVER ASKED TO BE BORN! 

I’m still here.

You are.

Whatever shit we have done that should or could have been the moments when it all flatlines- isn’t here- yet.

Yes, I will die one day. So you will you.

Whatever your beliefs about the afterlife – they are yours. If they comfort you – keep them.

If they help you put one foot in front of the other- use your faith, and your beliefs to be your best champion.

It’s so fucking cheesy, I know. ( face in palm) I feel like one of those square sandwich cheese melts.

My point is this:   it takes courage to decide to live, it takes a lot of courage to decide to take or consider ending our  own life.

Like the song goes: while I’m here I want to know why I’m here.

I can only do that by living life.

I don’t want to merely exist. I want to look back and go – it makes sense now.

These are my words.

Have a great week all.

DAISY XOXO

Here’s the song.

 P.S. and here is a poem I discovered when I was about 13/14 years old. I have used it and read it and carried it with me for over 15 years to see me through some pretty fucked up times.