About Me

Welcome to my blog, folks. This is something I've been considering doing for a long time, and in December of 2019 I decided it would be something I'd do at the start of 2020. A blog where I can talk about my life, the difficult parts and the good bits too. We all have lives that are packed with good and bad, easy and hard, and I wanted to have a place to open up about mine. I suppose you should know a bit about me, in case you're reading this.

I was born in Yorkshire, England in the early 1980s and had a wonderful childhood with caring parents and a loving sister, a family who were close and a home that was warm. Looking back, I can see elements of mental health issues that, at the time, I didn't consider. I'll talk about that in posts on here. I met my soul mate when I was 17 years old. She lived in another county in the UK, so we did the long-distance thing for a few years before getting engaged, moving in together, and then getting married. We live in our own house together now, and we're very happy. Again... I'm blessed in many ways. My wife, family and handful of friendships provide me with a great deal of support and happiness. In the early 2010s I suffered a spinal injury which would lead to spinal surgery, a surgery that would ultimately fail and leave me in a situation in which surgeons confirmed that my spinal stenosis, severe nerve damage, lack of vertebral discs and increasing pain would be a permanent thing, something that would get worse, not better, and something I would have to learn to both live with and try to manage. In the months and years that followed I have found myself dealing with mental health difficulties, suffering major bouts of anxiety, depression and invasive thought syndrome. I worked in the mental health sector for a number of years, but it's been a real challenge dealing with these feelings over the past few years. It started to become something I felt great shame and embarrassment about. There is a strange response from people, when you say you're "anxious" or "depressed" in which they look at you, make their own decisions about what they assume your life is like, and come to their own conclusions, judging your life, your mental state and your existence in the process. It's harmful and frustrating, another reason for this blog.

I am disabled, I have anxiety and bouts of depression. I get upset when people say that they know exactly how I feel. I often feel isolated. I often feel like a burden to those in my life. This is my daily life. I wake in pain, I fall asleep in pain. There is simply not a single moment in which the severe spinal pain isn't present. I hope this blog will help me get my thoughts out of my head, and if somebody reads this and finds my story relatable, then hey... why not.

I shall do my best to keep up to posting on here regularly, and I appreciate you reading this.

Peace.