You’re everything that I hoped for, that’s why I gave you my all

I came to write about something exciting, but first I am going to vent about the crappy day I am currently having (the exciting bit does come, I promise).
Today began with wiggly anxious feet, which is never the way a lady wishes to arise from her slumber. With too much unsolicited adrenaline my extremities tingle and I need to release this, so feet wiggling like I’m in Footloose is my usual go-to. Checking the time on my phone I realise I still have an hour before my alarm insists I get up. So I attempt to go back to sleep but I am met with the anxious thoughts that accompany my eighties dance movie choreography. Great. Then I receive a text from my sister to inform me that Dolly (the dog) has been sick a lot in the garden. Yippee. By this point it’s clear that I am not going back to sleep. I drag myself out of bed, eyes still mostly asleep whilst I get dressed to walk the dog and face the day. As I head downstairs I am met with an odor of vomit and two huge piles of sick. One of them is a revolting tangle of green slimy grass. Oh joy. As I go towards the back of the house to let the dog in to the garden, what do I see? Oh yes, that would be another 3 piles (this time its the raw chicken from last nights dinner), slick and putrid. Excellent. Then there is more in the garden and more in the living room I discover. Poor dog, clearly shes unwell but also, gross. It’s not even half nine in the morning yet. After spending a fair while doing my best Cinderella before she meets the prince impression, I walk the dog; who spends most of her time eating more grass…
My shopping is due to be delivered between ten and twelve today, so I await its arrival and get on with a multitude of boring house chores. However, the shopping still hasn’t arrived half an hour after the time-slot has ended. Weird. After logging into my account it would appear that I didn’t finish the transaction yesterday so our shopping won’t be coming today. And I haven’t even mentioned my strange enchanted hand that keeps going a little numb every now and then. I get to climb into a dark hole and never come out again now, right?!
Okay, I get that worse things happen at sea and certainly worse things have happened in my life, but today’s morning has felt relentlessly bleak. Roll on tomorrow evening and being with the boy I am incredibly fond of in a place that helps me breathe a little easier (when I’m not feeling anxious anyway *monkey covering eyes emoji*).

Now, onto much better news. On Tuesday the seventeenth of May, this blog hit twenty thousand overall views! I am so excited about this. I never thought I would actually keep up blogging, and I certainly never thought many if any people would want to read it. But I did and you did and now I’ve hit a huge milestone for someone who has just written a whole passage about dog vomit.
Thank you to everyone who reads my blog regularly or if you are entirely new and you’re helping me on my way to thirty thousand. I appreciate every view, every comment and every share I receive. You are all lovely people and I am so pleased that anyone would want to read my work.
I thought that I would link you my Facebook page, so should you wish to keep up to date and notified when a new post is published you can do so. Or, if you are a fellow WordPress user, feel free to hit ‘Follow’.
Here are some of my favourite pieces I have published on here, in case you missed them:

• Hold your head high, heavy heart (- Dear teenagers, it gets better or at least different).
• I have the dance moves of a mustache and the singing voice that sounds like a beard on the inside of my cheeks (- for all that love those with a beard and those that have careless whiskers to tame).
• And I am finally seeing that I was the one worth leaving (- Inspired by Frank Turner and moving on from something that never quite fit).
• You hid there last time, you know we’re gonna find you (-My tale of always being the fat girl and how some builders harassed me).
• But I am a ghost, just haunting myself (- An exercise in dissipating writers block, melancholic whimsy at its best).
• I’m ready to hope, swing me out of the low; wide awake in the glow, can’t do it alone (- Sadness and hope combined in melancholia. My canary sings no more).
• And I kissed him back like and arsonist with a pocket full of matches (-romanticised romance).

Once again, thank you.

Hold your head high, heavy heart.

Dear teenagers,
              it gets better. Although by better I probably mean different…but different is usually better.
You generally stop worrying if he or she likes you and what shoes go with which top. And all the lies your ‘friends’ tell you become irrelevant because the people who lie to you become redundant. You stop worrying about pleasing everyone else all the time and start to believe in pleasing yourself first. Hurting yourself, whether physical or mental, is less of a priority because you have more priorities in the form of responsibilities.
Im not going to say you should stop worrying about the things that you do, because we have all been there…but when you start, take a breath. Just breathe for a while and compose yourself. I have always been taken over by overwhelming anxiety, some of which I still can’t talk myself around from but sometimes it helps to just take a breath and give your brain time to let the rational part kick in.
If there is one thing I hear teenagers say all the time it is “I think too much”, as humans, we all do. You are not the only ones who let their brains run away with them. Given the chance we all do, but looking back I think it is because we had too much time on our hands. So with this free time, write it all down. Trust me, write it all down and not like you think someone might read your diary, but actually how you feel. Do not stop until it is all out there on the pages. When I was a teenager this is what I did. It helps you to focus on the actual thing that is wrong and not the other 20 or so things you begin to wallow in in the wake of feeling miserable about something. It also serves as a self help book of sorts. I have kept all my journals since the age of 13 and yes, they are as cringe worthy as you may imagine. But that is my point – when you are in the thick of being a teenager and life seems so desperately hard it helps to write it all down and look back at some of the earlier stuff.  When you next feel that wave of panic endorsed by hormones, all you have to realise is that you have been here before and you made it through that time and you will make it through this time. You will. And then when you are nearing the age of 24 you can look back on 15 year old you and see the distance you have come and the people who treated you badly have been left behind.
I am in no way saying this is easy, because I spent most of my teenage years pretending that I was fine to everyone around me, when really it felt like I was going under rapidly. I spent hours crying and wallowing and convincing myself that nothing would ever change or get better and that my chest would always feel this heavy. I also didn’t believe anyone felt as bad as I did, so I tried not to talk to anyone about how I was feeling because for one, I couldn’t find the right words to describe how truely terrible everything was. And two, I didn’t think anyone could help or understand what I needed to tell them if and when I could find the words. But I don’t think any of that was true, because if I felt like that and you feel like that, well, there is already two of us. But if you still do not feel you want to tell anyone, tell a journal. You don’t have to write reams and reams if you can’t face it, just a “fuck today” will do, because when you come back next time you will realise that you got through that day and you will get through this one too. Also, when you’re older it catalogues so many things you did and places you went with friends and you can’t even remember it.
Life can still suck, a lot, when you’re not a teenager anymore, obviously. But I think having gone through those times you learn coping mechanisms. Being miserable forces you to find ways of at least looking like you’re not and eventually, sometimes pretending everything is okay is enough to actually start to think that yes, actually, everything is okay. As the old adage says “what ever doesn’t kill you, only makes you stronger”. Yeah, just as cringey as my 14 year old self (okay, maybe not quite as cringey as I was…but still). 
You may still have times when you feel so consumed by misery you physically hurt or times when you are completely numb to everything and you just go through the motions of daily life not noticing anything. They still come and you will experience them, but they are nowhere near as frequent as they are in your teenage years. I think this is partly to do with your hormone levels balancing (thank god!) and the situations/people that caused you to feel this way are not so prominent in your life anymore.
Sometimes you will be lucky enough to find someone you can confide in and share some of what you are feeling, even if it isn’t everything. I hope you all have someone like that, I did and I am very thankful. I think in some ways, he saved my life. So I hope you read this and I hope you know who you are. 
If you don’t feel you have someone like that, then there are some places you can turn for help if it is all becoming too much for you on your own.
Mind – Elefriends: “is a supportive online community where you can be yourself. We all know what it’s like to struggle sometimes, but now there’s a safe place to listen, share and be heard.” or if you need to actually talk to someone there is a helpline number.
Childline – they now have an online chat facility where you are able to talk to a councilor 1-2-1 by IMing.
The Samaritans – you don’t have to feel suicidal to get in touch with this organisation, they are simply just someone to listen if you need to talk. You can call, visit or write to them by post, or they now have an email system in place, so you don’t even have to speak to anyone out loud (or find an envelope…).
Those are only a few but there are hundreds of other support websites out there, or I am happy to listen to anyone that might need to talk – leave me an anonymous comment on this post and I will give you my email address to get in touch. I have been there, I made it through and although my life is not sunshine and unicorns I am able to cope better when I start to feel miserable.
I hope this ‘letter’ was helpful in some way to someone.
Lydia x
P.S. When finding an image to end this blog on tumblr (the home of the teenager), when I typed in ‘sad’ a little screen showed up first saying “If you or someone you know is dealing with an eating disorder, self harm issues, or suicidal thoughts, please visit our Counseling and Prevention Resources page for a list of services that may be able to help” – with a little button to hit if you want to find out more. I wasn’t expecting that, and I think it is such a good idea and has relevant contact details for all different countries. Well done Tumblr. x

(I do not own this image).