Especially for Ali, and the people appearing on Facebook
It all depends what you remember.....
When I asked Alison what she thought happened she just said that one day I was there and the next day I wasn't. And it felt like that to me as well. I can't explain it any better myself. Facebook is a wonderful thing and it's bringing me a lot of people and I am blessed by it, but it's also bringing me challenges I wasn't expecting. I am finding that hard. Because people are coming back into my life who haven't seen me since the world was a very different place for me. A very painful place, a very dark place. A place I don't like to go back to - and that includes going back to the town where I grew up. There's a reason I stay away, and it's cos the place messes with my head and my heart and makes me feel strange things.
When I actually left school (like, physically stopped going to school there) I was not in a good place and things had been wrong for a lot longer than I knew even at that time. I felt like I had been too far ahead of myself - planning a future but not attending to or living in my present. I was depressed, I just didn't know that was what it was called - and it got a lot worse before it got better.
I was driven by anxiety and adrenaline
i wasn't eating properly and hadn't been for sometime - because the anxiety levels were such that it made it physically impossible to do so. I wasn't anorexic by any means - just felt sick a lot of the time!! I had panic attacks daily through the entirity of our first year in the sixth form.
I failed every single one of my lower sixth mock exams. I blanked at least one of the papers - could not remember a single thing and sat for two hours in the exam room stock still with terror.
I had a sort of breakdown, I think. I felt like i fell off the world because I didn't know what to tell anyone, so I stopped telling a lot of people anything at all. Not many people really knew what was happening - I know I didn't really have a clue!!
As for the interim, I think this is best. I will be as brief as I can and you can ask me whatever questions you like - I lay myself bare to that. ALL I ask is that if you ask those questions here, you identify yourself. My LJ allows for anonymous posting. Or, you can send me messages on Facebook or whatever. It's cool :)
I didn't do anything for a while. Then I got picked up by the training partnership and did some admin training. I worked for my church in Melton for a while and it helped to heal me and get me back into my own life. I also felt called by God to start training as a lay preacher at this time. This training continued until I qualified in 2000. Yes, I took a long time, but I was busy having a life as well *L* Then I continued on to do what would have been my gap year. I had quite a bit of it arranged and nothing else to do so I thought I would do it anyway. Best thing I could have done. I spent a year teaching nursery in South East London and I met the man who would later become my husband. I came back for a year or so, worked in Oakham at the District Council. Eventually I realised that I really really wanted to go back to College and then to University even though the thought of taking exams and failing again scared me silly. When David went to do a PGCE (which he did not complete, but that's his story, not mine) at his old university, I went to the F.E. College in the same city to pursue A Levels. I passed them - not well, but well enough. I went to University in 1996, about six weeks after David and I got married. Yes, I will remember to put some history pics on Fbook although I think there are some on here somewhere......
Now there's a scary sight for y'all.... Dave with hair, and me in a fancy frock *L*
So I went to University, and it was hard but it was also good and wonderful and funny and I made good friends and I got my degree. And I'm proud to say I did what the detractors (namely the head of sixth when I left school) said I could not do. Anyone who knows who this person was/is, in my wickeder moments I would still relish the idea of ..........................stabbing her through the ear with a sharpened degree certificate.....but I will restrain myself! Anyway..... I graduated in 1999 and have done a number of things since - worked in eating disorder care (amazing, but not a career high, sadly) been P.A. to an evangelist, served school dinners, worked behind a number of checkouts, moved half way back across the country and had a variety of medical tests *L* David was unemployed for a long time and then found a job with a small local company where he worked until we moved over here five years ago. Now he works in Christian Hospitality, which is rewarding but also can be very taxing.
(that's Daddy, having a cuddle while our bundle was in SCBU in June) David and I waited a long time to be able to have our children and so our sweet girl is a particular joy to us. So we are exhausted first time parents and you know what? We don't care!! What I will do in my future...God alone knows. And I am thankful that He does, because it saves me having to worry about and be in control of it.
I am who I always have been, but I am not who I was then.
Ok...anyone of those id's will take you to the thing, but I have noooo idea why there are about 12 of them....
*runs away from technology* It's too late at night to flap about it now.
When I asked Alison what she thought happened she just said that one day I was there and the next day I wasn't. And it felt like that to me as well. I can't explain it any better myself. Facebook is a wonderful thing and it's bringing me a lot of people and I am blessed by it, but it's also bringing me challenges I wasn't expecting. I am finding that hard. Because people are coming back into my life who haven't seen me since the world was a very different place for me. A very painful place, a very dark place. A place I don't like to go back to - and that includes going back to the town where I grew up. There's a reason I stay away, and it's cos the place messes with my head and my heart and makes me feel strange things.
When I actually left school (like, physically stopped going to school there) I was not in a good place and things had been wrong for a lot longer than I knew even at that time. I felt like I had been too far ahead of myself - planning a future but not attending to or living in my present. I was depressed, I just didn't know that was what it was called - and it got a lot worse before it got better.
I was driven by anxiety and adrenaline
i wasn't eating properly and hadn't been for sometime - because the anxiety levels were such that it made it physically impossible to do so. I wasn't anorexic by any means - just felt sick a lot of the time!! I had panic attacks daily through the entirity of our first year in the sixth form.
I failed every single one of my lower sixth mock exams. I blanked at least one of the papers - could not remember a single thing and sat for two hours in the exam room stock still with terror.
I had a sort of breakdown, I think. I felt like i fell off the world because I didn't know what to tell anyone, so I stopped telling a lot of people anything at all. Not many people really knew what was happening - I know I didn't really have a clue!!
As for the interim, I think this is best. I will be as brief as I can and you can ask me whatever questions you like - I lay myself bare to that. ALL I ask is that if you ask those questions here, you identify yourself. My LJ allows for anonymous posting. Or, you can send me messages on Facebook or whatever. It's cool :)
I didn't do anything for a while. Then I got picked up by the training partnership and did some admin training. I worked for my church in Melton for a while and it helped to heal me and get me back into my own life. I also felt called by God to start training as a lay preacher at this time. This training continued until I qualified in 2000. Yes, I took a long time, but I was busy having a life as well *L* Then I continued on to do what would have been my gap year. I had quite a bit of it arranged and nothing else to do so I thought I would do it anyway. Best thing I could have done. I spent a year teaching nursery in South East London and I met the man who would later become my husband. I came back for a year or so, worked in Oakham at the District Council. Eventually I realised that I really really wanted to go back to College and then to University even though the thought of taking exams and failing again scared me silly. When David went to do a PGCE (which he did not complete, but that's his story, not mine) at his old university, I went to the F.E. College in the same city to pursue A Levels. I passed them - not well, but well enough. I went to University in 1996, about six weeks after David and I got married. Yes, I will remember to put some history pics on Fbook although I think there are some on here somewhere......
Now there's a scary sight for y'all.... Dave with hair, and me in a fancy frock *L*
So I went to University, and it was hard but it was also good and wonderful and funny and I made good friends and I got my degree. And I'm proud to say I did what the detractors (namely the head of sixth when I left school) said I could not do. Anyone who knows who this person was/is, in my wickeder moments I would still relish the idea of ..........................stabbing her through the ear with a sharpened degree certificate.....but I will restrain myself! Anyway..... I graduated in 1999 and have done a number of things since - worked in eating disorder care (amazing, but not a career high, sadly) been P.A. to an evangelist, served school dinners, worked behind a number of checkouts, moved half way back across the country and had a variety of medical tests *L* David was unemployed for a long time and then found a job with a small local company where he worked until we moved over here five years ago. Now he works in Christian Hospitality, which is rewarding but also can be very taxing.
(that's Daddy, having a cuddle while our bundle was in SCBU in June) David and I waited a long time to be able to have our children and so our sweet girl is a particular joy to us. So we are exhausted first time parents and you know what? We don't care!! What I will do in my future...God alone knows. And I am thankful that He does, because it saves me having to worry about and be in control of it.
I am who I always have been, but I am not who I was then.
Ok...anyone of those id's will take you to the thing, but I have noooo idea why there are about 12 of them....
*runs away from technology* It's too late at night to flap about it now.