Panic attack

Posted on by kkamilah 2 Comments

Everything’s fine.

It’s sudden. It doesn’t happen gradually, it’s nothing and then it’s all encompassing. It’s zero, then it’s a billion, you’re breathing and then you’re choking.

But you do feel it creeping, that familiar feeling that you had forgotten about. It’s bubbling somewhere beneath the surface, and as soon as you realise, all of your senses switch off in a joint effort to combat it. You can’t hear anything around you, you can’t hear anyone talking to you because you’re using all your energy just begging for that feeling to go away before it erupts and forces you to experience it again. People around you will scream at you because you’re not listening to them but it’s because you’re too busy trying to fight it off before it comes.

But of  course, life never happens the way we want it to and suddenly you can’t breathe.
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Anywhere I go I make the gang go [Wales journal]

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PSA: My heart belongs to North Wales. This is a long overdue post.
I always say I hate the shithole in which I live, but that I would never leave London unless I was going to Finland/somewhere in Scandinavia. Well, except I ABSOLUTELY WOULD!!!! To North Wales.
The last time we went to south Wales everybody was racist, so bye.
 
I love Snowdonia. I love Conwy. I love Llandudno. I love the people, the accent, the air. I am not a people person really, but everyone here is so nice!!! I love it!! It makes me wanna be a better person. I love that nobody litters. That actually warmed my cold, dead (joking, it’s warm, bloody, and very much beating) heart. I didn’t see that many bins, but nobody threw anything on the floor (except a couple banana skins on the mountain, hashtag slow release energy). I love that everywhere you go, you can see mountains. I love all the streams and I love that there are sheep literally EVERYWHERE. I’m not a beach person. But I am a mountain person. I am definitely a free-roaming-animals-in-the-street person.
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I'll be me [Mental Health – Part 1]

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Here’s a long post, read it if you have time. Like 5 minutes, realistically.
Also: If you can figure out what’s written on that notepad, I’ll dedicate a post to you.
So.
What am I doing these days.
Well.
First of all, I’m going to try my hardest not to incorporate my infamous self depreciating humour into this post, even though that is my biggest coping mechanism.
These days I’m reading, writing, researching, and listening to a lot of James Bay.
And I’m thinking.
I’m doing a lot of thinking, but I’m also doing a lot of …just … not thinking.
In other words: I’m keeping myself busy.
I try not to write about mental health, even though I should, because almost every blog I visit has posts about ‘dealing with depression’ or ‘dealing with anxiety’ or just ‘mental health’. And it makes me wonder how many of these people really do suffer from these issues, or if they’re just self diagnosed. As someone who has had doctors referring them to therapists and pestering them to take anti-depressants, it’s a bit … I don’t know. Annoying. It’s the reason I don’t enjoy speaking about my own mental health. I’m fine, but I’ll never deny that anxiety is my biggest enemy.
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Mental health + university

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All ye who indulge in schadenfreude, gather round.
It’s not mental health awareness week/month/whatever, but alas, not everything is restricted to a particular time of year. I talk about this now because, as a third year student, the pressure when you have looming deadlines and a dissertation that will basically determine whether or not you just wasted £27,000, is crippling. In addition to everything that crippled you before university.
So understandably, a lot of us are faltering in the mental health department. I’m not saying that a lot of us suffer from mental illness, because a lot of us don’t. I have already spoken about how too many people claim ‘depression’ or ‘bipolar’ when they don’t actually suffer from these illnesses, but that doesn’t mean our mental health doesn’t suffer. Much like physical issues, our brain sometimes suffers
It often comes in many contradicting forms. Maybe you stay up until dawn, downing red bull and coffee for hours until you’re seeing shapes dancing around in front of you, telling you it’s time to go to bed or you’ll collapse. Maybe it’s rejecting all invitations to go out, go shopping, relax, because you have too much to do and you couldn’t possibly deal with the guilt you’ll feel when you get a horrible grade, because it’s obviously due to that one day you took off. Maybe you consistently study because it’s the only thing to distract your mind but at the same time it’s burning you out. Maybe it’s the tendency to sleep all day and all night because you have so much work to do that your brain and body just can’t deal. Maybe it’s going out all day everyday just to avoid the 5 deadlines you have next week. Maybe it’s people telling you you look sallow and tired and that you’re working too hard. Maybe it’s the fact that you can’t remember a time where you had the energy to be genuinely happy about life because life itself is begging to leave you.
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How long you gonna stay here, Joe?

Posted on by kkamilah 3 Comments

Rant: Heart vs Head

Sorry, but we all end up listening to our hearts. Whether we do in fact end up changing our minds and doing what our hearts desired, or we’re still looking back after making a ‘logical’ decision that conflicted with what we truly wanted because it’s too late and now we’re living a life of subtle to severe ongoing misery, beating ourselves up with “what if I wasn’t such a fucking pussy?”, we end up dwelling on what our heart wanted either way. Logic, rationale and listening to our head only really delays the inevitible and wastes time. It gives us a little longer to convince ourselves that the “right” decision is what we should be making – but we fail to address the question of “right for whom?”. So you were strong enough to walk away from what you really desired, congratulations, you now have an empty void that can only be filled by what you abandoned in the first place. To be honest, therefore, being able to listen to your head instead of your heart isn’t being strong, that’s bullshit. Absolute bullshit. There is no strength in walking away from what you really want, if you really want it and it’s difficult for you to walk away from it, why the hell are you doing it? That’s not strength. That’s stupidity. Strength comes from doing what you really want, taking all the risks that come with it. As is plastered all over the internet and peoples’ minds, a life of ‘oh well’s is a hell of a lot better than a life of ‘what if’s. Obviously there are some cases where you would NOT do this, such as a situation that is dangerous for you or the people around you, but if your decision isn’t going to physically hurt anyone, do what you want.
When you want to make a decision, you toss a coin, the best method there is. But the decision you make is not dependent on whether that coin lands on heads or tails, it lies with what you’re desperately wishing for it to be whilst that coin is still in the air.

When you tell your friends to “make sure I don’t go back to him”, and you’re secretly dying for one of them to come to you and tell you that they don’t think you’re crazy at all, you’ve found your answer.
At the end of the day, everyone wants to think logically. Everyone likes to boast that they think with their head and that that is positively correlated with having no emotions. Untrue. You can seemingly lack emotions and still think with your heart. Do what you want, don’t be a fucking pussy and do what you think is right, fuck logic. Follow your head if you’re weak and not your own person. FOLLOW YA HEART OR YOU’LL BE MISERABLE.

Now Playing: Ventura Highway – America

You're NOT depressed, the weather is NOT bipolar.

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Robin Williams was a man who played an undeniably huge part in our childhoods when our eyes were glued to the TV when Jumanji or Mrs Doubtfire were on, and I can’t deny that, although I don’t place any higher importance on a celebrity than anybody else, his death really saddens me. Apparently it was a suicide, brought on by depression. I understand many people are upset at this news, but the responses I’ve read are amazing (see: ridiculous). This is the comments section of an article posted by Daily Mail (although I do admit I regularly read the comments section for bants, this one in particular is perfect for highlighting a problem that exists in society):

1) Apparently fame/fortune deny you the ability to suffer from depression.
Okay, moron, and all other morons who share this view, are you aware that nobody chooses to be depressed? Are you aware that it is an illness? Are you aware that you could be famous or rich and suffer from a physical deformity that is out of your power? Are you therefore also aware that you could have everything you ever want in the world and still suffer from a mental illness? Other people having it “worse off” than you does NOT negate your unhappiness. And never let anybody think it does. It doesn’t matter if people in other countries are being bombed or starved, that does NOT mean you aren’t allowed to be unhappy or suffer from a mental illness. You DO NOT CHOOSE TO SUFFER FROM A DISORDER.  
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