Who is Hannah?

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I wish I knew the answer to that question. I often wonder what I would have been like without all this mental health stuff, what am I like under the muted layers from medication, and without the brain freeze of depression, and with out the constant distraction of suicidal thoughts. If you tok all the mental things away from me what would I be like, am I a funny person under all these layers?Would I have been the overachiever that was predicted in my year 7 school report, and still be the energetic person of my childhood, who was the one who got things done, and would I have had the energy to do all the sports that I used to take part in? Now I feel like I am a shell of my former self; somewhere under all this junk I am there. I still think about sports, one day I will go back to long distance running, one day I will enjoy music again, one day I will care what I look like and maybe one day I will have ambition. I just find it hard to see this person that I am now, it doesn’t look like me, sound like me or think like me. I suppose it is a bit like when you have your hair cut and each time you see yourself in the mirror you have to take a second glance

It is odd to think of a Hannah who doesn’t listen to music, I used to see a band play live at least once a week and I was inseparable from my ipod. A Hannah who didn’t do her Duke of Edinbourgh gold qualifying expedition because she couldn’t cope with all the energy demanded by the walk. A girl who is constantly negative, who bores people with her moaning and sees the positive in nothing. Someone who doesn’t care what she looks like, who will go days in the same clothes and weeks between hair wash. A person who never puts on make up, brushes her hair or puts on perfume, is this really me? If I asked one of my friends  to imagine me I hope they would picture the old me, the girl who wouldn’t leave the house without eyeliner and mascara at least, who had neat hair and coordinating clean clothes on. I would hate to know how they would picture the new me. Somehow this illness has robed my of personality; I appear flat, opinion less and objective-less. Even picking what to wear or what to eat is difficult, decisions are a battle with my head, any choice is somehow linked with choosing life or death at a deeper level.This illnessis a little like running a race; everyone started as strong as each other and its quite tight but suddenly you are a long way behind. You don’t understand, your feet are moving faster than everyone else, you know you should be a better runner. You look down, you are on a treadmill, not going anywhere and everyone else is in the distance. If you stop, you will fall off the end of the treadmill and make things worse, if you go too fast you fall off the front of the treadmill. There is no way you will ever win the race, you are last and in a loose-loose situation. So on that downer I will try and look at the positives of this experience. I suppose I have stopped judging people by what they look like, I know who my friends really are, I can empathise with other people suffering with mental illness, I can see what stigma is really like and I have experienced the Cinderella NHS mental health service.

Thinking back to the title of this post “who is Hannah” I have got a little sidetracked. Back to the point then, what do I look like from having read my blog? I think I look like someone who always has arguments; with pharmacists, with men in psychiatric units, with my family. I suppose I have written about them because apart from lying in bed or seeing someone from CAMHS it was the most interesting part of my day. I mean I don’t think you want to hear about what I am eating (or thinking about eating), the paint I have been picking from my bedroom walls, or the pile of unwashed clothes at the foot of my bed. I think I sound like an unhygienic grease ball; my hair has never reached the supposed stage where it stops getting any greasier and becomes self cleaning and I do change my clothes most days. I sound like someone who always moans, who is never pleased and believes in Kaizen, I suppose Kaizen is quite like me. So what should I tell you about me that’s not already in my “about me” section? Nothing (maybe that my life doesn’t evolve around CAMHS or mental health but sleep or lack of it), because I don’t actually know how I appear, and without doing one of those dull myspace like quizzes it is difficult to think of extra things to write about. 

Last line…

Does anyone have anything they would like me to write about for this week or next weeks “in the limelight post”? My life has somewhat been taken over by Sims and making jelly. I am sure that you would like to know about the lack of mental illness in Sims or a review of different flavours of jelly but it doesn’t really fit in with my mission statement. And I am considering about not being anonymous, any tips. Well I don’t want this to come up if you google my full name for family and work reasons but I cannot see why I need to be so secretive. Any “coming out” horror stories or opinions about anonymity.

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Tags: anonymity, bipolar, CAMHS, depression, energy, Health, mental helth, stigma, suicide