So this may or may not have been a silly idea to try and juggle with auditions and applications and everything that's going on right now, BUT, it's now May (aka Mental Health Awareness Month) and this week is extra extra special because it's Mental Health Awareness Week 2017!! SO, to help celebrate and mark the occasion, i've decided to try and do a blog post every day this week speaking out about mental health, and why it's so important that we keep talking about it. (As illustrated, for the purposes of this first post, solely by Frozen gifs. Enjoy x)

I think i've blocked out a lot of what happened when I was in hospital when I was younger, but I do remember lying in my bed on the children's ward, all numb and tired from crying over my NG tube pain, and my mum or maybe one of the nurses saying to me that one day, i'd be able to use all this pain for good. She promised.
I didn't really believe it at the time, but that little thought and fire stayed in me and as I got better (and then worse, and then a bit better, and then catastrophically worse etc etc), it's become a fighting force within me and glowed stronger and stronger - some kind of adamant, furious determination that yes my mental illnesses could steal my childhood and my life from me, but there was no way in hell I was going to let all the things I was fighting through stop me from using my experiences to speak out and maybe help someone else. The problem was that I always clung onto the little bit of determination that id be able to do something good 'when I got better', or 'one day' - but nearly 10 years down the line, I was realising fearfully more and more every day that I don't know that that day will ever come. I don't remember my life without mental illness, and in all honesty i'm not sure that I ever see myself living free from it in the future either - so slowly I was realising at the back of my mind that 'one day' was never going to come, or if it did, it might be too late - I was going to have to start trying to turn my experiences into something positive NOW. Whilst they were still attacking me every day. And that's freaking terrifying.

The little push I needed to start came from a guy who is now one of my favourite people in the whole world and possibly one of the most inspirational, talented, and unfailingly lovely people on the planet - and I met him for the first time in the hallway of a small theatre. For those of you who don't know him yet - James Rhodes (this guy!!) is a classical pianist in the coolest, most brave and rockstar-esque way imaginable. He's not only insanely talented, but intersperses his pieces with brilliant, honest, funny and sensitive commentary about his own struggles with mental health and the bizarre, comic and fascinating woes of the composers whose work he features. ANYWAY, after seeing him perform at the Arts Theatre in London on a fluke, I went to one of his further gigs where he was doing a meet and greet afterwards (it was a much tinier venue!). In a nervous bundle of gabble, I said something to him which probably made absolutely no sense about how amazing it was hearing him speak out and how much it resonated with me, because as it turned out we had been in psychiatric hospitals at roughly the same time, and how I was basically just overwhelmed with admiration for him and a lot of other fangirl-y embarrassing stuff like that (probably). James, being utterly lovely, treated me like i'd just said one of the most eloquent and genuine sentences in the english language, gave me a hug, and then looked straight at me and told me in the calmest, loveliest voice to never stop talking.

And that was the 'real' real beginning.

 Talking about the things that hurt you is hard. That little moment with James that encouraged me to start saying fuck it and trying to unashamedly and truthfully speak out about my experiences with mental health was right at the beginning of my 2nd year of uni. The next week, I went to my university's DAMSA (Disabled and Mental Health Students Association) group on a whim, randomly stood up and ran for a place on their committee, and got it. I started trying to go even when my MH was shit, and helped run their Time to Talk day event that year ft many many cakes and brownies (which was how I met Time to Change!!) - By 3rd year i'd become their secretary, run my own Time to Talk day event for the University, started my first mental health blog (www.theoverthinkingblog.wordpress.com) and started sharing campaigns on social media. I still wasn't exclusively stating that I DID suffer from the mental illnesses I was trying to better on Facebook and Twitter, but I wasn't denying it or shying away from it either, and even something that little is a big step when you're sending posts out to a world of people you actually know. It's a hugely vulnerable feeling, but it's empowering too.

Being accepted to be a Time to Change Young Champion is an absolute dream, and one of the best things that could ever possibly have happened to me. Giving my first testimony after all the stress and tears of trying to write it was an amazing feeling - it felt like I was finally doing the thing i'd hoped all along I might be able to one day do - to use my own experiences to help change other people's experiences understanding of mental health for the better. This blog is another part of my 'speaking out' journey, and it's taken me an awfully long time to try and convince myself that I can have a blog where I write both about mental health and about my life in general when my mental health issues just happen to be there too - but i'm finding my way (I think!). Mental Health Awareness Week is a hugely important, inspiring and fiercely brilliant thing which shines a hugely deserved spotlight on all the charities, campaigners, bloggers, companies and people who are trying so hard every day to change the way we think about, perceive and treat mental health issues, but the truth is it should be the same every week. I still doubt myself hugely, and sometimes everything I try to do still feels hopeless and unbelievably shit, but at it's heart speaking out is terrifying, addictive, electric and astonishingly powerful, and the more we do it, the better we can help positively change the future of our mental health for everyone.

Right now as I write this, I'm curled up in front of 'Friends' with a microwave fluffy dinosaur hottie (purple), and anxiously/tiredly dipping baby weetabix in my tea (I know, it's nice I swear). I've just finished my second day at my new full time grad job (in a coffee shop), I've had 2 panic attacks, and am terrified and overwhelmed. This is basically my go-to safe zone, minus the weetabix. Whenever everything is just far far too much, I drown it out with Friends and tea. It doesn't always work, but I try. Sometimes that's the only thing you can do.

If you've been on Facebook or Twitter lately, it probably hasn't passed you by that today marks World Mental Health Day 2016. This is a super wonderful thing, because it gets people TALKING, which sounds so simple but in practice is so freaking hard. It's one thing to say you're against mental health stigma, but it's so hard to practice out in the terrifying rush of everyday life. I know I'm horribly guilty of this and it eats me alive. I'm a young champion for Time to Change, but I'm still too petrified to call in sick to work when I have a panic attack or my depression gets too suffocating. I'm currently a sort of stable-ish weight (much to my own dismay and torture), but 10 years of struggling with anorexia and sub-type purging means my body is much more fragile that I allow for, and sometimes the combination of pushing myself to the edge as I do to carry on a 'normal life' and being such a perfectionist/ so desperate to please others means I literally break myself to the point of becoming dangerously ill. I spend a scarily huge, secretly hidden amount of time tearful, anxious, shaking, sick and exhausted, but I still have never once called into work and told the truth. Last week marks the first time that I've declared myself as having depression on an employment contract which is a huge step for me, but even then I feel horrible and upset with myself knowing I only did so after I'd been offered the job.

One of the people I admire most in the whole world, James Rhodes (if you haven't heard of him, check him out. He's a brilliant and astoundingly lovely human being), tweeted that though World Mental Health Day is amazing, really EVERY day should be World Mental Health Day, and I think that's a really important goal to aim for. You don't get days off from mental illness, and it 100% has NO respect for your plans, dreams, or general need to function as a human being. E.g:

Me: hey! I actually feel like things might maybe be okay toda-
Depression: SUPRISE BITCHHHHHH

Honestly. Every time. ANYWAY, long story v. short, talking more openly and confidently about mental health like we do on this day each year is powerful af, and it's up to us to keep that message of acceptance, kindness and support out there every other day of the year too. When my OCD symptoms first started to get seriously limiting and out of control, I very very vividly remember being out in town with my dad and jumping over a crack in the pavement back and forth over and over and over again, and my dad was yelling at me to stop but I hadn't 'finished' yet and the anxiety was making me cry, and parents walking past started shielding their children's eyes from me. But I didn't know I had OCD, I was 12, I'd never HEARD of OCD, and neither had my Dad. It's isolating enough struggling at all, but it's a million times scarier when you don't understand what's happening to you either, so I completely stand by James' message that ultimately we need to find the courage to speak out and raise awareness not just on one designated annual day, but every day. A bit like my tea-and-friends thing, it doesn't always work, but we are getting better. We all have mental health, and the sooner we find the bravery and determination to talk about it, myself included, the better things will be for all of us.

So, here are 3 things you can do right now to help fight Mental Health Stigma:
1) Text a loved one just because
2) Pop a pledge up on the Time to Change pledge wall, no matter how tiny!
3) Remember: