You
shoot me down,
But
I won’t fall,
I
am titanium
David
Guetta ft. Sia: Titanium
In a recent blog post for I’m NOT Disordered’s 12th Birthday, I was going through my archives of old blog posts, and I happened across one from my 26th Birthday (which you can read here) where I made a bit of a huge statement about where I’d like to be by the age of 33 and it’s something that I definitely haven’t achieved. It’s also something which I no longer even strive towards. So, it got me thinking about all the things I thought I’d be or have achieved by now and about how much life can change and develop and sometimes, rather than feel let-down and disappointed, we just have to grow and change too. We have to recognise that maybe it wasn’t meant to happen and that because something else has come along, it doesn’t at all mean that you’ve failed in some way. It’s about being accepting of change and recognising the potential opportunities and strength it can bring to you rather than zoning in and concentrating on any negatives and feelings of being unprepared or unwilling to take on something new and unexpected. I feel these are skills and mindsets which I’ve managed to gradually develop over the last decade, and I wanted to share with you how things around education and career have changed for me and how I’ve coped with these shifts in my life…
This is
probably the aspect of my life which is the most different to what I thought it
would be by now because during my GCSE’s (exams you used to take aged 16) and A
Levels (exams when you’re 18) I was planning to become a Lawyer. Prior to this,
I hadn’t given much thought to a dream career – other than perhaps fashion
because I opted (you could choose three subjects in addition to the compulsory
ones) to study Textiles as a GCSE subject. But then, when I was 15, the abuse
started, and I had my first suicidal thoughts when I found myself believing
that dying would be the only way it would end. I even wondered how to do it –
with my thoughts including jumping from my abuser’s office window or taking
tablets! I had lost all hope, and it wasn’t just about the current situation; I
also thought that even if the abuse did – for some reason – end, how would I
even recover from it? How would I ever feel happy again? How would I ever find
peace in my life?
It was
kind of ironic that even when the ‘worst’ bit happened (the rape) that wasn’t
actually the straw that broke the camel’s back – it wasn’t the thing that made
me think ‘I need to speak up!’ It was actually an argument with my abuser. We
used to argue in public in front of so many people all the time and it was
actually the largest reason why – when they were questioned by the Police – his
colleagues said that they had suspected abuse was happening. Because our
arguments were beyond anything they should have been when you considered the
roles we played in each other’s lives (for legal reasons, I can’t disclose my
abuser’s profession). They weren’t normal, understandable, or predictable for
those around us – including my own peers too who often defended him and said I
had no right to speak to him that way. He commanded respect and admiration from
everyone around us – including my family! – and this was one huge reason why I
didn’t report what he was doing because I was filled with the conviction that
no one would believe me if he denied it.
So, we
were in his office, and it was one of the rare instances where I’d managed to
fight him off, but instead, we got into a huge argument – our biggest in the
six months the abuse lasted. I ended up running out of the office, but he came
after me and we just kept screaming at each other until we were in this one
corridor, and I yelled “think of your wife and children!” and his employer’s
office was right there so he came steaming out asking why I thought I had the
right to speak to him like that. Before I knew it, the whole story just spilled
out of my mouth! I was promptly called a manipulative liar and told to leave
the building, whilst waiting for my Mum to collect me, I heard laughter, looked
down a nearby corridor, and saw my abuser and his employer shaking hands and
laughing – hence the name for the Shake
My Hand Campaign!
As a
result of being branded a liar, I felt silenced and didn’t tell my Mum what had
happened when she came from me. I was also given multiple rules to abide by
with my GCSE exams and the largest of these was that I had to do my exams in my
own room and not with my friends and peers. It ended up being a good thing
though because I had my own Exam Invigilator so there was a credible witness
when my abuser interrupted three of my exams and intercepted an important piece
of work from reaching the correct Teacher at School. In the end – still unaware
of who exactly he was and what he’d done – my Mum stormed into the building and
told them that if I failed my exams, she would be holding him responsible.
Before we knew it, the School arranged for me to do my exams in a Community
Centre down the road. We couldn’t even be in the same building!
Despite
it being way back in 2007, I remember the question in my Religious Studies exam
because it was whether a religious person could be a bully, and I ended up
writing two pages about how my abuser believed in God and heaven and hell but
was the largest bully I’d ever met! I was convinced I’d have failed all my
subjects and on results day, I got a phone call from my School saying I wasn’t
allowed into the building with my friends to collect mine. It eventually became
apparent that this was on my abuser’s orders! After some arguments between a
few different people, the School backed down and I went in with my friends and
screamed as loud as I could when I discovered I’d passed everything with 7
grade C’s and two B’s (one of which was for Religious Studies!). It was like
the ultimate revenge, it’s actually what taught me that success is the best
kind of comeback.
Because
of my success in my GCSE exams, I was allowed to do my A Levels, and I opted to
study Law, History, and Philosophy. The rape and abuse led to me developing the
aspiration of wanting to become a Lawyer and so, in my second – and final –
year of my A Levels, I applied for University and ended up with a conditional offer
to study Law at Newcastle University, with my acceptance depending upon the
grades I achieved in my A Levels. Unfortunately, in early 2009, I was leaving
my weekend job and heard a man’s voice tell me I was useless and to kill
myself. I defied it for ten days before – on a day when I had three
back-to-back exams – I ended up making my first suicide attempt. I passed out
at School and was taken to hospital, when I ran away from it, the Police found
me almost in the nearby town centre and promptly detained me under their powers
of Section 136 of the 1983 Mental Health Act. This meant when they took me back
to hospital, I had to undergo a Mental Health Act assessment with two
Psychiatrists and a Social Worker who deemed me to not have capacity, and I was
sectioned under Section 2 of the Act. After doing this, the hospital staff gave
me a sedative injection to administer the lifesaving antidote treatment without
my consent.
I
obviously failed my A Levels – well, I achieved a grade F in Philosophy but no
grade in the other two subjects and so University was now off the cards and
when they began discussing my discharge from the psychiatric hospital, I had no
clue what to do with myself. In the following three years, I attempted to enrol
in a Fashion course at a College, applied to do a Child Care course, and
completed a few months of an Access to Higher Education course, but for one
reason or another none of them stuck and in 2012 I found myself sectioned again
and admitted to a psychiatric hospital where the average length of admission
was 12 – 18 months! In the midst of those three years, I had developed the
conviction that I’d been put on this Earth to commit suicide at a young age in
a way that would highlight the failures of healthcare and mental health
services. And I held onto this belief for a while after creating I’m NOT
Disordered in 2013 and then I confronted it with the hospital Psychologist (and
I blogged about it here), and she helped me to see that
I could actually find purpose through my blogging. And I think that was a real
turning point and a defining moment for me and I’m NOT Disordered as I began
taking blogging a lot more seriously and became more passionate, dedicated,
determined, interested, and committed to it and to communications and marketing
as an industry too.
In
2014, I was finally stable and well enough to enrol at the local College near
to the psychiatric hospital on their Creative Writing evening classes and I
absolutely loved every single class! I realised though, that I did learn much
better when I took the learning materials back to the ward and in doing my
‘homework.’ So, I looked into things, and it turned out that the College did
Distance Learning courses too, so I enrolled on a few of those over the
following year or so and then I discovered FutureLearn and took a few of their
Distance Learning courses and then Centre of Excellence too and eventually, I
found my CV to be growing and growing!
In
2017, after being in the community for three years, I finally applied for my
first voluntary role in the field of communications and marketing in the form
of being an Advertising Assistant for a support group for unemployed people. I
was hired and I did that for two years before being successful with a funding
bid from the National Lottery Community Fund and I suddenly found myself
feeling as though I’d reached the top in terms of what I could achieve with my
duties and responsibilities in that position. So, at an Annual General Meeting,
I asked if I could be considered to be the Deputy Chair so that I could
experience a new challenge and something that would provide me with the
opportunity to develop new skills. To my surprise, the Chair at the time said
he’d had a nice long stint in the role and that I could “take the reigns,” and
then the Committee unanimously voted me into the position!
A
little while into my role as Chair, I decided that my mental health was strong
enough to apply for a Digital Marketing Internship too and was successful in
doing that three-month contract where I learnt some invaluable skills in
communications and marketing – the largest and favourite one being the
existence of Canva!
Unfortunately, at the end of the Internship the other Intern was chosen to be
taken onto the team as a full-time member of staff. But I guess it wasn’t too
unfortunate because it meant that I was able to apply to be a Digital Volunteer
for a local charity; St Oswald’s Hospice and my four years with the charity
were so influential on my prospects of having a career in Communications and
Marketing. Whilst I was there, I was actually given two paid, temporary
contracts – one as the Kickstart Project Coordinator and the other as a
Communications and Marketing Assistant.
Over
recent years, with my interest and passion for all things communications and
marketing growing and developing, I’ve ended up completing a Fundraising
Diploma, a Diploma in First Aid for Mental Health, a Certificate in Credible
Content Creation for Communications Professionals, a Diploma in Internet
Marketing Strategies for Business, and I just enrolled on a Diploma in Project
Management. These qualifications and just learning as I go, have really helped
my blogging career. They’ve aided me to improve my content and the
opportunities and collaborations I seek/engage in by teaching me about writing
pitches for all sorts of projects, putting together press releases, and
evaluating and utilising social media and I’m NOT Disordered’s analytics to
shape the content I create.
There’s
a girl I was friends with growing up who has actually gone on to be a Lawyer
and one who became a Psychologist and years ago, I used to look at their lives
– their careers – and think and believe that I’d completely wasted my life by
having a mental illness and by needing to be hospitalised for so long. I would
think ‘I could be there by now too.’ But, as time has gone by, as my mental
health has improved, and as my blog’s success has escalated and intensified, I’ve
come to really, truly believe that blogging and producing content that helps
others, is my purpose. It’s why I was put there. It’s why I’ve experienced all
that I have. And this isn’t me desperately looking for a means to cope with all
the traumatic memories by establishing some sort of comforting rationale for
them all occurring. I’m actually just looking at things in a more positive and
productive way that is a lot more reassuring for my safety/risk levels.
I’ve
also found that this new sense of purpose and passion led to me creating the Shake
My Hand Campaign
in June 2024. In all honesty, when I decided to do it, I pictured it being a
Facebook page or Instagram account with frequent content aimed at helping and supporting
survivors of rape and abuse to report their experiences. Then I met with the
Chief Executive of the Cumbria, Northumberland, Tyne and Wear NHS Foundation
Trust (CNTW) and their Director of
Communications and Corporate Affairs and the Comms Director commented that she
thought the Campaign had the potential to become a registered charity, and I
started dreaming and aiming higher! Before I knew it, I have recruited eight
volunteers (after a promotion, we’re now recruiting a Social Media Assistant –
you can apply for the role on Reach Volunteering here) and just facilitated a
Training Packages Taster Session (to find out more about how you can book one
for free, visit the page about it on our website here) for the national mental health
and addictions charity: Waythrough! And because of that one
comment, and these successes, I’m still dreaming and aiming for more and for
better.