*This
post is a bit of a follow-in from my previous post where I picked apart some of my Birthday blog posts,
you can read it here*
Unfortunately – or fortunately, depending on how you look at it – there’s a huge mental health awareness date (Time To Talk Day) taking place on my actual Birthday of February 1st, and since I have a really special piece of content already lined up to mark that date; I thought I’d post my Birthday blog posts beforehand. Now, a genuine ‘unfortunately,’ is that due to a new commitment (which I can’t quite talk about just yet) I’m unable to complete the thought behind my Birthday posts which was to split all my Birthday blog posts up and go through each of them talking about the bits that stand out, what has changed, what’s stayed the same… So, in addition to the previous blog post I’ve linked at the beginning of this one, I managed to write about my 26th Birthday blog post and then I’ve put together a little reel at the end of the post…
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The
Things Turning 26 Made Me Think
About [MY BIRTHDAY] | I'm NOT Disordered (imnotdisordered.co.uk)
This
Birthday post was mostly a chat about the relationship I was in at that time,
our engagement, and our goals around moving into a house together, getting married,
and having children. In blogging about those things, I talked about how – when
my mental health was at its most poorly and I was in the specialist psychiatric
hospital – if I were asked to consider any goals for my future, I really
couldn’t think too far ahead because I was so suicidal that I genuinely
couldn’t envision being alive for a whole lot longer. In this Birthday post,
however, I recognised that I now felt confident in my decreased risk levels and
was so excited to plan for the more distant future.
Whilst
that relationship finished a number of years ago, feeling able to set long term
goals is something I’m still massively comfortable doing – just that the goals
are now mostly centred around, and focused on, I’m NOT Disordered, my
career-related opportunities, my finances, and my mental health…
My
Largest Goal for I’m NOT Disordered:
to have reached on or close to, 1.5 million readers within the next 12 months.
My
Largest Goal for My Career-Related Opportunities: to complete at least the 6-months
on my contract for my new voluntary role (which I’ll be blogging about in a
separate post).
My
Largest Goal for My Finances: to
have gradually paid off the entirety of any and all my debt in the next 18
months.
My
Largest Goal for My Mental Health: to
have had some sort of a reduction in both of my psychiatric medications
(Aripiprazole and Fluoxetine) by the end of 2024.
In this
26th Birthday post, I also talked briefly about the fact that due to
the rape and abuse when I was younger, I feel completely emotionally and
psychologically incapable of having children naturally. I wondered whether this
would be something readers will be wondering about and curious as to whether
this is a notion that I still experience and something that still rings true
for me. It is! In fact, the only difference is that I don’t know if I can even
still picture myself being a Mum to anyone other than my three babes – my two mini-Lionhead
bunnies (Luna and Gracie) and my kitten (Ruby) – because, in all honesty,
they’re definitely enough of a chaotic and unpredictable handful!
In all
seriousness though, throughout my mental health journey, I have come across a
number of things that I thought would have maybe worked their way out of my
life or that I thought I would no longer agree with; and this point regarding
having children is one of those. I think that ultimately, the reason I struggle
with the sheer reality of things like this (results of the abuse) just not
changing, is because as far as I’m aware, my abuser is just living his normal
life. And that infuriates me to think that the person who was in the wrong in
this situation is facing less consequences than the person who really should
have no responsibility.
One
comment or phrase in relation to this which so many people have said to me over
the years of self-harm and suicide attempts is “it means he’s winning.” Now, I
fully recognise the meaning and (usually!) good intentions behind this, but –
personally – it’s something which I feel that I need to see for myself. Only
then can I really believe and trust in it to be able to utilise it as a helpful
thought to stay safe when I feel like without it, I haven’t got much motivation
to use my healthy and productive coping mechanisms. And fortunately, to be
honest, finding truth in this notion was actually quite straightforward – not
easy, but definitely straightforward – because there have been numerous
occasions when I’ve actually used the exact opposite mindset when self-harming.
I’ve said before that I discovered that if I were to self-harm with nothing
really in my focus, then I’d sometimes bleed; but if I were to do it whilst
thinking about my abuser and the feeling that he’s won, I’d end up needing
surgery! So, in turning this into a positive motivation, I had to learn to see
it in a whole other light and to recognise that I can make the choice as to
which perspective I use when I’m struggling.
The
question of whether my abuser is winning plays a huge role in the realisation
and acceptance that some of the consequences I’ve experienced due to the abuse
– like the questioning and uncertainty around having children – aren’t going to
be short-term.
OTHER
BIRTHDAY BLOG POSTS:
TWENTY-NINE
HIGHLIGHTS FOR MY TWENTY-NINETH BIRTHDAY!! | I'm NOT Disordered
(imnotdisordered.co.uk)
THIRTY
RANDOM THOUGHTS FOR MY THIRTIETH BIRTHDAY! | I'm NOT Disordered
(imnotdisordered.co.uk)
HOW
I MADE IT TO MY THIRTY-FIRST BIRTHDAY | I'm NOT Disordered
(imnotdisordered.co.uk)
THE
REEL: